After reading thousands of CVs, the same handful of mistakes come up again and again, and almost none of them are about the person’s actual ability. They are formatting and framing errors that quietly cost interviews. Here are the seven worst, and the fix for each.
The ones that get you filtered
- Two columns and text boxes: many ATS read them out of order or not at all. Go single-column.
- A task list instead of results: “responsible for” tells the reader nothing changed. Lead with outcomes.
- No numbers: a figure in a bullet gets read roughly three times as often as a qualitative line.
- One generic CV for every job: if it is not tailored to the posting, it reads as background noise.
The ones that get you skimmed past
- A vague objective at the top: the most valuable space on the page, wasted on a cliche.
- Walls of text: recruiters skim; dense paragraphs get skipped entirely.
- Typos and inconsistent dates: small errors read as carelessness, fair or not.
Fix them in one pass
You do not need to rewrite everything. Run down the list once: layout, verbs, numbers, tailoring, top third, whitespace, proofread. Most CVs jump a tier after a single focused edit.
See the research in how recruiters read a resume in 7 seconds, run yours through the ATS checker for an instant score, and use the resume checker to flag the weakest lines before you apply.